Stimulate users who haven’t opened your app in ‘x’ days

Today, many brands and businesses are focusing their mobile marketing efforts more towards client retention and engagement than securing new purchases and acquiring new customers. Apps play a crucial role for the companies to reach their set goals and objectives.

Getting a consumer to open an app is becoming tougher and tougher. According to The Nielsen Company, the average number of apps per smartphones increased from 23.3 in Q4 2011 to 26.8 in Q4 2013 (+15%). With more than 1.2 billion (!) apps available on the Apple App Store (1.3 billion on Google Play Store), the variety of Apps is enormous, and it is likely to increase.

Over the past half-decade, the proliferation of mobile devices has transformed us into an app-driven society, presenting marketers with new opportunities to connect with consumers by creating more interesting and sophisticated apps to command their attention. – Smartphones: So Many Apps, So Much Time, The Nielsen Company, July 2014

As customers are expected to download more apps in the future, app developers and businesses face the difficult challenge of continuously staying present in their customers’ minds, which basically means staying present on the customers’ phones. How do app developers manage to do that?

Don’t let users forget about your app!

In order to avoid being left in the shadows and to stay competitive, apps must maintain a constant dialogue with their users. For the sake of simplicity, let us assume there is three types of people who have your app on their smartphone:

The “I-use-the-app-whenever-I-can” user:

This type of app user is not your primary concern. He or she is happy with your app and uses it almost daily to get the latest updates, receive customer rewards or do other stuff. For this kind of user, it is not essential to maintain the dialogue, although you should watch out, that he does’t slip into the next stage, …

The “I-only-sometimes-use-the-app” user:

This type of user should receive a lot more attention than the first user type. He opens the app every now and then, not as often as you want him to open it. This can have several reasons. Maybe he is just not satisfied with your app, but maybe, he is starting to forget about it. And this is the point where app developers can step in: Maintain the dialogue with him! Keep him up to date! Give him customer rewards! Make your app stick out! Most important: Make sure, that he does not become the third kind of app user:

The “I-have-this-app-on-my-phone-but-I-don’t-know-it-is-still-there” user:

Attention! Losing a single app user means losing a potential customer! This kind of user has your app on his phone, but he doesn’t know it still exists. This requires immediate reaction: Remind him that your app is still there!

Stimulate your users with PUSHTech™!

For example sending a push notification that arrives in the user’s device even if the app is closed, informing the user of new features or updates will trigger the user to open the app again. Analysis software can help your to differ between the three previously described types of app users. You can use different triggers for your push notifications, e.g. time triggers: If a user does not open your app for x days, send him an update, newsletter, reward or other relevant notifications.